Tess Horan's family traveled to Tonga to carry out her dream of establishing a library on the island



They visited the school where she had taught, met the other volunteers in her Peace Corps group and visited the tiny house where she had lived. They took a boat to the spot in the ocean where she had been attacked by the shark and scattered her ashes and flowers over the water. Prater said she was touched by the reverence with which the villagers treated the family and the respect they seemed to have for Horan. "She had made notice of her integrity, intention, and sincerity so immediately in this small village,'' Prater wrote in a journal she kept of the trip. "In a way, she had lived there a lifetime, as far as they were concerned. The first day she arrived at her site, she went to every house and introduced herself to 60 different households.''

Tess Horan's family traveled to Tonga to carry out her dream of establishing a library on the island

A Healing Journey

By Phaedra Haywood | The New Mexican

November 12, 2006

Caption: Dan Equinoss, a Peace Corps volunteer from Group 70, trained with Tessa Marie Horan during her time in the South Pacific. The new library was constructed using money from a memorial fund established in Tessa’s name and is now stocked with about 1,500 donated books.

A family in despair travels to the South Pacific to carry out a dream

Less than a year after a Santa Fe woman was killed by a shark off an island in the South Pacific, her family traveled there to carry out her dream of establishing a library on the island.

``After we gained our composure, we realized we could either take Tessa's death to a place of despair and continuing sadness or raise the frequency up and continue her work,'' said Kristena Prater, mother of Tessa Marie Horan, the 24-year old Peace Corps volunteer who died Feb. 1 after a shark bit off her leg as she was swimming off the coast of a tiny village in the Kingdom of Tonga near Fiji.

Prater said the family planned the trip to the village of Tu'anuku on the island of Vava'u (where Horan was working with the Peace Corps) in October, to coincide with the time of year Horan had first arrived in the island kingdom.

While in Tonga, Horan's family -- her mother; her father, Kevin Horan; her sister, Jasmine Burke; her boyfriend, Scott Jones, and her godmother, Peggy McDowell -- retraced Horan's last steps, visiting for the first time the people and places that had been important parts of the last months of her life.

They visited the school where she had taught, met the other volunteers in her Peace Corps group and visited the tiny house where she had lived. They took a boat to the spot in the ocean where she had been attacked by the shark and scattered her ashes and flowers over the water.

Prater said she was touched by the reverence with which the villagers treated the family and the respect they seemed to have for Horan.

``She had made notice of her integrity, intention, and sincerity so immediately in this small village,'' Prater wrote in a journal she kept of the trip. ``In a way, she had lived there a lifetime, as far as they were concerned. The first day she arrived at her site, she went to every house and introduced herself to 60 different households.''

Prater said Horan had made such an impression in Tonga that her story was already being woven into island myths.

``A Tongan man ... told Scott that it has been said that the graveyard on the way down to the wharf has a spirit that had fallen in love with Tessa and wanted to keep her close,'' Prater wrote in her journal. ``This is one of many Tongan theories we have heard on why Tessa died in Tonga.''

While in Vava'u, the family organized and oversaw the building of a library Horan wanted to establish on the island.

Using $10,000 from a memorial fund established in her memory, the family hired a carpenter and workers and purchased building materials to refurbish an existing structure and build bookshelves that were stocked with about 1,500 books donated from various sources for the effort.

Prater said the Tessa Marie Horan Foundation's board of directors -- her parents, her godparents and her brother -- plan to continue upgrading the library. The next purchase they hope to make is a computer that can be used to catalog the books.

The foundation will also contribute to an effort by The Mountain Fund to establish a center for trekkers who want to do volunteer work in Nepal, something Prater said was important to her daughter.

They also want to continue her environmental and humanitarian work closer to home.

``Tessa was born and raised in Santa Fe,'' Prater said. ``She was very involved in the sustainable living plan going on in this community. She was part of Ecoversity, she trained people who take people on Outward Bound trips. Now that we've gone to do this in Tonga, we really want to focus our attention on doing things in this community.''

For more information about the Tessa Marie Horan Foundation, visit www.tessahoran.com.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3004 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.

Links to Related Topics (Tags):

Headlines: November, 2006; COS - Tonga; Safety and Security of Volunteers; Fallen; Libraries

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By freeda alvares (cache-dtc-ae04.proxy.aol.com - 205.188.117.8) on Thursday, December 28, 2006 - 1:43 pm: Edit Post

MY PRAYERS GO TO ALL THE PCV VOLUNTEERS SERVING ALL OVER THE WORLD
PEOPLE IN CHARGE PLEASE TAKE CARE OF THEM AND GIVE THEM REGULAR HEALTH CHECK UPS. IF THEY ARE NOT HEALTHY HOW CAN THEY SERVE?
MY SON IS A PCV AND I WORRY ABOUT HIM A LOT.ALLOW THEM TO HAVE A FULFILLED EXPERIENCE. kEEP IN TOUCH WITH THEM AND GIVE THEM A BOOST OF THE BEAUTIFUL WORK THEY HAVE GONE TO ACCOMPLISH.
pEACE & GOD BLESS